


Noor

by SchrodingersShanu



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: "It's like Hoseok lives in a society but Hyunwoo lives in a society too" - The New York Times, Angst because HuMaN cONditIoN, Basically Wonho is an artist in a rut and Shownu opens his mind and legs - the fic, CHANGKYUN IS MY FAV SON HERE HE IS THE BEAR OF MY FRUITS OF MY LOINS, Hyunghyuk almost married, Hyunwoo is rich, Jooheon and Kihyun are very cute and normal, M/M, Painter Wonho, Philanthropist Shownu, Pining, Slow Burn, Wonho is looking for a prince charming but he finds something better and more 3d - the fic, Wonho is not, Wonho's POV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:08:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27915766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SchrodingersShanu/pseuds/SchrodingersShanu
Summary: Hoseok is an artist in a rut looking for color. The man of his fantasies - Hyunwoo - invites him to his holiday home in the mystical mountains of Mir as the resident artist and Hoseok finds himself entangled in the stories of the people staying in the house while making his own with Hyunwoo, all the while fighting his own literal nightmares.(aiming for weekly 2k updates. Keep me in your prayers.)
Relationships: Chae Hyungwon/Lee Minhyuk, Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Lee Hoseok | Wonho, Lee Hoseok | Wonho/Son Hyunwoo | Shownu, Lee Jooheon/Yoo Kihyun, Lee Minhyuk & Son Hyunwoo | Shownu
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 1 - Hoseok knocks on a door. What adventure!

A trembling gloved finger presses a doorbell switch. The moment is unsure. Hesitant.

A sharp ding cuts through the moaning wind. The sound is crisp, dynamic; adding life to death. Reaching no one, the sound returns back to Hoseok, unanswered by all — living humans and dead doors.

The wind howls louder, pressing against him from all sides.

“I chose the worst day,” Hoseok mutters under his breath and gives another hesitant press.

The same crystalline ding shoots across the land like a whizzing arrow through empty air. Hoseok shivers. The house doesn’t extend a hand in sympathy. His clacking teeth and dry lips juxtaposed to the house's unmoving, perennial grey facade.

Passive to Hoseok’s needs, the house doesn’t come to life when he presses his hand against the door. The huge wooden door stays closed, the ghosts inside asleep. Even while attached to a house so clearly inspired by the gothic, the door works like all the other doors.

But, then that’s the thing about fantasies.

They are almost always better than the reality.

He presses the doorbell a third time. Even emboldened by the cold, the gesture is still skittish. It’s not him, it’s the house. It’s as if its each element has been designed to crawl between the wrinkles of his brain until he is left overthinking everything.

Look at the switch, for instance. Like the whole house, the round, black switch feels too regal, almost alien-like in its design. Even as Hoseok presses it gently, like everything he does, he can't help but feel that a guard would come and chide him for touching something that should be behind a glass wall in a museum.

"It's so windy. Please, open up," Hoseok says to the door.

The house stays apathetic.

Beaten by its stoic enemy, quivering hands adjust a woollen cap and retreat to the sleeves of a black parka. Hoseok sighs. He managed to lose to an inanimate door, and isn't that a quintessential Hoseok thing to do?

He hoists his backpack higher. Squaring his shoulders, he moves on to the thick handle embedded in the door. The boar carved delicately in the rusty steel invites him to a battle — one spirit of wilderness to another.

Nobly accepting the challenge, Hoseok lifts the handle, thinking of himself a mighty warrior, and then halts.

He can already hear the sound that the handle will give and it makes him queasy.

Whereas the bell had seemed like an invitation, the handle seems more ornamental. If it's meant to be used then Hoseok is sure, it has to be used with authority. "Why would you invite someone and then make them call for you again and again in this shivering wind, you barbaric ruffians!" That’s the kind of message Hoseok imagines banging the handle would give. Hoseok isn't sure if he is ready to commit to such kind of hostility just yet.

Hoseok lets the handle drop. The glint in the eyes of the boar has to be the one of victory. It can't be the light, not when the sun is hidden behind grey clouds, watching Hoseok's dilemma like a conniving maiden hidden behind her fan.

Hoseok presses the bell again and steps back.

No more, he is still of civilization.

Turning around, he tucks his red nose behind his muffler — a splash of burgundy on his black-clad figure. He walks to the edge of the elevation on which the house is built, feet dragging.

Is it possible to taste exhaustion in your eye sockets? Hoseok yawns. He needs a nap in a coffin.

Stretching his neck, he looks around. Nothing except a lone, leafless willow tree in the courtyard. He climbs down the steps carefully. There are puddles of water in every possible depression, it must have rained here. The scene reminds him of the broken roads around his childhood home, it’s a disproportional connection. There used to be muddy rivers on those roads after each rain. It’s like comparing an ocean to a glass of water.

He turns around to take in the house fully. It’s a small castle. A tall facade with a roof made of rows of grey slates, big windows, spirals — quaint but luxurious. There is no comparison to any of the places he has lived.

He crosses the paved courtyard and notes a small table and two chairs, the first sign of life. He sighs in a white cloud of relief. Shuffling at one spot for a moment, he decides to retrace his steps.

Once again, he presses the bell, and once again, moments pass and he is only met by lifeless silence.

Should he just leave and come back later?

Though how? There's not even a man nearby, much less a café. When he had come in a taxi, the civilization had slowly dwindled off until there was nothing but only rows of _Chinar_ trees lining the steep, empty road for miles and miles. The disturbing lack of traffic noise had been wonderfully bizarre to Hoseok's metropolitan ears.

That slope and nothingness ended at this remote house; far-flung from nearby towns and possible taxi stands. Hoseok has no chance from here.

Outside the boundary of the house, the same desolate road and _Chinar_ trees confirm Hoseok's assessment. Maybe he should give the surrounding woods a chance. Gather some fruits, make a shelter, drink his own urine.

Anxiety deepens inside Hoseok’s chest, colours his immediate future bleak. He shakes his head to dispel it, patting his red cheeks to infuse some human warmth as the cold seeps into his insides.

He sweeps his gaze around, noting the snow-covered mountains trapping him from all sides. The tall walls of nature look deceptively close. Hoseok is aware that they are actually miles away and yet — dread seldom seeks reason.

He takes his phone out. Still no signal. If he dies here, would the cold preserve the rot until his corpse is found?

A cold breeze catches hold of him. Hoseok groans in discomfort and gathers his limbs closer. The wind picks up, howls a widow's story. The dead willow tree starts swaying to it. A play of the macabre; a dance of the skeletons in the graveyard.

It doesn’t sound bad. As he is, the cold and exhaustion make him feel like a bundle of bones with some flesh glued on anyway. While some hot tea would have been wonderful, some distraction and some movement can work too.

Without any further thought, he leans his weight on one foot, tilting his body left and then the other side. Feeling himself, he raises his arms and starts moving them in a swaying motion with his torso. His lavender hair bouncing and covering his eyes.

If he wants to be a tree being caressed by the winds or a popping and locking skeleton ghost, then he will. It beats being a frozen popsicle.

On his fifth wiggle to the right, the door gives a little creak, applauding or scorning. Hoseok stills, wide-eyed innocence on his flushed cheeks.

A stranger is standing at the open door. Average-height, the man’s face is sharp but his features delicate — another contradiction; another element constructed to wiggle its way into Hoseok’s brain wrinkles.

His stern eyes fall on Hoseok's raised arms and swiftly move on to his backpack. Hoseok wonders if he invaded someone else’s home and if the stranger would be kind enough to get him a helicopter and fly him to Hyunwoo’s.

"Is that all you have, Hoseok?" the stranger asks with formal politeness, tone as sharp as his face.

Hoseok shakes his head, putting his arms down with an awkward smile. "Everything else is at the station. Hyunwoo told me to leave it there. Uh— Hi. How are you?"

The man opens the door wider and stands aside. "Hello. I am well and how—” Hoseok shivers and gives him a nervous smile. “Oh. Please, do come in. It's cold outside."

Hoseok shivers some more and shuffles in. "Thank you."

The man shuts the door behind him and locks it.

"Please leave your shoes here."

Hoseok nods and bends down to do so.

"I apologize for taking so much time. We were expecting you a few hours later," the man says, staring down at Hoseok’s shaky fingers floundering with the laces.

"I had some plans with my— uh, friend at _Ichal_ but they fell through, so I took the earlier train," Hoseok says, nervous like the time he was called into the principal's office ages ago. There was no accusation then, and there is none now. The man’s words are soft but it’s the authority in his posture that has Hoseok stuttering his words out.

The man is wearing a perfectly ironed light-blue shirt. It’s neatly tucked in his black slacks; no wrinkles, no ruffles. His back is straight, narrow shoulders strict. As if he has a rod for a neck, his head never tilts down even as his eyes stay at a kneeling Hoseok.

“You should have let us know. We would have picked you up.”

“Oh, it’s okay. I got a taxi,” Hoseok says, brows sloping with frustration as the aiglet slips from his icy fingers.

The other man kneels down and takes a hold of his laces, leaving Hoseok’s hand hovering awkwardly. It takes him an infinitesimal moment to untie the knot, and in the next second, he is up, hands neatly tucked behind his back.

“These are the bleak, isolated hills of _Mir._ The kind that are neither cold enough to invite tourists nor warm enough to welcome new inhabitants. It rains here all the time. There are no farms, no industries. No one really comes here. So, you have to book a taxi in advance.” Hoseok gets up and responds in naive nods. “Someone must have booked and then cancelled. You are lucky."

“Yeah, I think so,” Hoseok ventures.

The man nods back, face as flat as the tenor of his voice. "Let me make you some warm tea." He imitates a smile and leads Hoseok in. "Welcome to Son’s holiday home, Hoseok. I hope you enjoy your stay."

“Thanks. uh— I missed your name, I think?”

“Kihyun,” the man says without turning. “I am the caretaker.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We get to know a little more about Hoseok and some boring deets of the house. What adventure!

"Here," Kihyun says, placing the silver tray on the table.

“Oh, thank you.” Hoseok picks up the cup of tea carefully and wraps his palms around it. The warmth permeates the porcelain and reaches his skin. Feeling his goose flesh turn human, he puts the cup under his nose and breathes in the heat with relief.

Unlike the grey exterior, the inside of the parlour is warm, lighted by the pallid sunlight. A soft subdued peach wallpaper, wooden furnishings, and knick-knacks of various kinds make it look homely. Sitting beside the fireplace, the crackling wood helps Hoseok feel like a welcomed guest at long last.

"Please make yourself comfortable. I'll get your luggage from the station," Kihyun says, still cold and grey.

"Won’t you sit with me?"

Crouched beside the fire with his palms out, Kihyun stares up at him with such obvious confusion that Hoseok’s fingers itch to make a study of him in charcoal. Shadows and palpable emotions.

When Hoseok gives him a welcoming smile — the futile kind he uses for stray cats — Kihyun pulls back a chair from the round wooden table and sits down, his mouth a hard line.

Hoseok presses his shy smile to the cup and takes a quiet sip. Like ancient magic, the notes of ginger and honey wring out the cold from his bones in a hot flash that travels down his throat and expands in his chest.

"Oh, this is great! I feel so much better already," he says, humming with delight.

"It's a family recipe."

"Family recipe for a," Hoseok pauses, unsure if Kihyun is serious, "chai tea?"

"It's not chai. It's a chai-like watery soup served in a cup."

Hoseok giggles, hiding behind his cup when Kihyun's brow lifts in offense.

"Oh. It's a...good meal then!"

"Thank you," Kihyun says, voice flat. Leaning forward, he adds, "I thought of you as someone who doesn't like company."

"Oh. Uh— Why?"

There's a fold in the table-cloth that grabs Kihyun's attention better than Hoseok's query. He stretches it, smoothening it plain with his palm. Satisfied with his work, he looks up and points to Hoseok’s left. "Your paintings."

Hoseok turns and finds a piece he had made over two years ago.

Entrapped in a plain frame, the painting is of a lone willow tree wrestling the wind. It's tilted haphazardly to one side, unable to resist the pull of the storm — much like Hoseok. Its foliage is full but grey. Below it, there's a child standing, his hair spread around him by the wind. His plain white gown is crooked, mimicking the willow. His cheeks are chubby but skin grey, eyes set on the pebbles in his hands. There is a storm in the grey painting; the only warmth — a single yellow leaf.

Hoseok shifts uneasily. He can see a billion things wrong with it, starting from the wrong shade of grey he used for the child’s skin.

"Do I seem lonely because of my paintings?"

Kihyun's eyes rake over it and after a beat of silence, he looks at Hoseok curiously. "You do." He blinks slowly, intently. "Or maybe it's the place. The people who live here lose their colour, then what's a painting?"

It’s the kind of sentence that needs another beat, a further inquiry, followed by a hearty discussion about places and people, ending with the principal question, which is — What does Kihyun mean?

Hoseok doesn't do any of them. Instead, he continues sitting there quietly, drinking his tea in small sips, looking at Kihyun with veiled wonder.

Kihyun gets up and bows slightly. "I apologize that Hyunwoo couldn't be here to welcome you. A dear friend is visiting us today. He is busy preparing for him. He promises to receive you in the afternoon."

Hoseok shakes his head. "It's not a problem. Please don't think of me as a guest you need to mind. If you see me, think of me as a piece of furniture; place a tray on me and feel free to leave."

Kihyun's cheeks lift in a half-smile, the first genuine one. "I'll keep that in mind."

Kihyun looks at the clock beside the fireplace. Hoseok's gaze follows but his eyes stray and get stuck on the black and white photo placed on the mantel.

It’s of three young boys laughing, arms around each other, a food basket in one's hand, the other holding a book, the one in the middle embracing his companions. Above the mantel, there is a huge mirror. Its ornate gold frame captures him and Kihyun perfectly like another photograph.

“Thank you for the te— soup,” Hoseok says, placing the cup back on the tray. Noticing the blue peony on the cup, he picks it up again and brings it closer until the image imprints behind his eyelids. The design is beautiful, delicate. It makes him smile. When he looks up, his eyes inadvertently flit back to the mirror. The glass morphs his grin — twists his features all wrong, stretches his lips too wide; too eager.

Kihyun clears his throat. "Before I get busy, let me show you to your room." He picks up Hoseok's backpack, grunting in surprise. "Oh, this is heavy. You made it look so light."

When Hoseok moves to take the bag, Kihyun shakes his head. "It's fine. You must be tired from such a long journey."

Without waiting for a response, Kihyun turns around to leave. Quickly, Hoseok collects his gloves, cap and muffler from the table. With a last lingering glance at the photograph, trying to decipher if the one with the food basket is Hyunwoo and then another at the mirror, he follows Kihyun out.

***

_"What do you want?" Hoseok asks._

_The pebbles don't give him an answer. They never do. He looks at the tree hoping for another clue but the grey leaves show him nothing._

_"This is a puzzle. There has to be a clue."_

_He walks around the willow tree. Wearing its bark like a tattered gown, it looks age-worn. Hoseok hops and starts climbing the trunk, it comes easily to him_ — _it has to; he has done it numerous times by now. At this point, he is more tree and less boy. The weathered bark meets his flaky skin, nothing chafes. He sits down on a thin branch and tries to look for something that's not black, white, and grey. He is sick of the grey._

_"Where’s the yellow?" He asks, his voice a little squeak._

_No answer. He stands up, hands batting the boughs above him._

_Even though he knows the fracture is coming_ — _like it always does_ — _he can't help but jump on the branch. There’s a glint of light in the dense leaves above him, he needs to enclose it in his little fist._

_The branch splits in half. He falls down with a silent scream and hits a sharp rock._

_There's blood. It’s grey. Thin, it spreads below him, colours the ground under. More grey fills the frame._

_It's not Hoseok, it's the little boy. His dead eyes are grey._

_Grey. Grey. Grey._

_He is sick of the grey._

***

Hoseok wakes up with a sharp inhale.

Urgently, he takes his hand out of the blanket and examines it, a wild fear lighting up his wide eyes. When he sees the familiar paleness of his skin, he sighs out in relief. Gulping, he puts the hand over his racing heart and exhales through his mouth.

The room around him is dark. It takes him a moment to adjust to the unfamiliar surroundings. He switches on his phone to look at the time.

4 PM?

"I slept for 8 hours. Oh."

The hour takes him by surprise. He really must have been exhausted to nap for so long. The way his joints burn, his muscles heavy and tired, he feels even more tired.

Pushing away from the pillow he was holding in his sleep, he sits up. His shoulders burn, a slow trickle of diluted acid. He rolls them around and the pain eases a little. He rubs his eyes and ignores a million memories of his mum scolding him for the gesture.

The wallpaper in his bedroom is a dull yellow but it shines like new. The bed is old-timey with a wooden canopy and white curtains — protecting Hoseok's chastity from the perverted old ghosts of the house, no doubt. Beside the bed, there’s a white dresser with a slim oval mirror embedded in it. It’s beautiful in a whimsical way.

Hoseok finds the colour white brave.

He always wonders how does one go out wearing a white shirt on an important day without being utterly terrified of the earth turning upside down, and spilling itself on them? Hoseok’s eyes the delicate carvings in the dresser. How does one paint their most beautiful creation in white and not worry about the dust raised by storms getting stuck in it?

In the right corner of the room, there's a huge bookshelf. Virgin hardbound copies with golden lettering on their spine. closed behind a thin sliding glass. Hoseok thinks the size of the books probably resists any mischievous hands better than the glass itself.

Like the parlour in which he was received, the furniture is all wood. Instead of the light brown colour that Hoseok used for colouring tree trunks as a kid — the kind that the parlour had — here, the furniture is deep mahogany. Made by and for someone mature.

Hoseok peeks into the adjoined sitting room and finds the same colour theme in its wallpaper and furnishings. It has a table with two chairs, a small couch, the same kind of fireplace as the parlour with the same kind of mirror over it — but no personal photographs.

In the name of decoration, there's a clock and a generic mountain landscape on the wall. It's clearly a guest room; blank and designed to adapt to its inhabitants. If Hoseok hadn’t seen the desolate outside, he would have taken a paintbrush and marked it as his. The solemn aura of it suits him.

If Hoseok had suitors, he would have received them here in the sitting room. Told them all that he lacks over a steaming cup of white peony. And unlike the other times — the times where his cracks blurred behind his smiles — here, people would have seen them clearly. It’s that kind of room. The one where quiet reigns and the words fall heavy.

Hoseok walks back to the bedroom, eyes on the oriental rug under his socked feet.

Even before the first sip would have travelled down his suitor's oesophagus, he would have laid out the psychosis of his needs.

 _I want to love you but I love your sadness more. I might turn you upside down until I find it. I always try to be careful and gentle but I might still topple what you built because_ — _I confess, I can’t love you if you aren’t a little bit sad. Not too sad though. Just enough. The kind of sadness that is born out of human condition and built into just some of us. It’s my compulsive need to slither in between people’s brain and prod and prod and prod to find that one iota of sadness, of fatality, of depth and then leach off it and put it in my art. Because nothing sticks to me; sadness, happiness, nothing. It’s all superficial and empty inside me, but when I paint with my emptiness and your sadness, in those rare moments, I feel something and I want that forever._

In the bathroom, Hoseok splashes his face with cold water. This is what he is here for. That kind of special brand of sadness that he needs. The one he sees in Hyunwoo.

This is what he is everywhere for — his suitors would know.

_My art needs my imagination and my imagination needs reality, so let me suck out your sad bits like a masochistic parasite. Do it for my art, yeah? Because I can't paint anything but sad things. I want you to see this ugly side of me and still love me. Love me not despite it, but for it. Just love me completely. All my parts. Love me the most and allow me to paint over you until everyone who touches you — even after I leave — has smudges of me on their fingertips. That’s what I want._

Hoseok comes out of the bathroom, water dripping from his face when a gentle knock comes from the door.

“Hoseok?”

**Author's Note:**

> I am keeping the chapters short so that I can update more frequently (aiming for once a week), please keep me in your thoughts and prayers, Showho nation. Ty! Find me on: [Twitter](https://twitter.com/crankyminwon) || [Curious Cat (if you wanna be all mysterious and anon)](https://curiouscat.me/MellowMinhyuk) Come by sometime, I am a dreamboat.
> 
> *
> 
> I would like to thank the man, the myth, the legend, Sunray Hao for beta reading this fic. He is /gollum voice/ myyyy preciooooussss but above all he is a beautiful writer. Check his fics out, he is a magic-poetry-painting-music kind of writer: [firstloveghost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstloveghost/pseuds/firstloveghost).


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